I strongly disagree with presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s proposed gas tax holiday because:

1. The gas tax holiday may encourage people to drive more therefore increasing America’s carbon footprint
2. If people drive more then gas (a nonrenewable resource) is burned, therefore not available for future use. As a result, unavailability combined with rising world demand and disrupted/poor output after the gas tax holiday most likely will cause prices to rise
3. The gas tax provides money to maintain America’s fragile and crumbling transportation infrastructure so summer driving provides much needed funds for America’s transportation infrastructure

The idea of a gas tax holiday illustrates how out of touch Clinton and McCain are with energy and environmental issues. Barack Obama rightly opposes the gas tax holiday. “Score one for Obama.” From Reuters:

Economists said that since refineries cannot increase their supply of gasoline in the space of a few summer months, lower prices will just boost demand and the benefits will flow to oil companies, not consumers.

“You are just going to push up the price of gas by almost the size of the tax cut,” said Eric Toder, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington.

Obama criticized the plan as pure politics and said the only way to lower the price of gas is to use less oil.

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